


a bad wound may heal, but a bad Name will kill.

by marshmallownose



Category: House of Anubis
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt No Comfort, Kinda, Multi, Romance, Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, The marks can mean either Soulmate Enemy or Heartbreak and it's impossible to tell which is which, characters and relationships added as I post
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28279476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marshmallownose/pseuds/marshmallownose
Summary: "don’t think back on someone whose name you forgot, he is probably someone else by now."
Relationships: Sarah Frobisher-Smythe & Rufus Zeno, Sarah Frobisher-Smythe/Victor Rodenmaar Jr., Victor Rodenmaar Jr./Rufus Zeno
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	1. Sarah & Victor

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Welcome to an AU that has ripped my heart out as I developed it and will hopefully bring you both pain and joy as well.
> 
> basically, everyone is born with someone else's name somewhere on their body and that name is the name of either their soulmate, their worst enemy, or their greatest heartbreak. these people always meet. not everyone has a mutual name (meaning if Character A has Character B's name, Character B does not necessarily have A's name), so it makes it that much harder to discover who is a soulmate and who is one of the others.
> 
> This is (hopefully) going to be a one-shot series all within this same AU, and we're starting with the pre-canon trio so it's 100% starting off super tragic i am so sorry. Some of these won't be angsty I promise

The Names were as old as time itself, evidence of their existence stretching back as far as the Ancients and even further. For eons, the mystery of the Names etched onto the skin of human beings puzzled the great minds of society; some proposed the Names were a person’s gravest enemy, while others disputed such claims with tales of the Names on their bodies belonging to their greatest loves. Others still asserted that the Names were those individuals who would cause the most heartache. Eventually, there came an agreement: the Names could mean all three depending on the individual. The only problem was it was impossible to know whether the Name was that of a Soulmate, a Nemesis, or a Heartbreak until they met.

That wasn’t a problem, though. Somehow, someway, they _always_ met.

Sarah knew her parents had each other’s Names. Her mother showed her once, lifting her hair to show off the _Robert_ that curled around her ear in her father’s elegant handwriting. Sarah had gazed at it in wonder, reaching out with her small hands to trace the letters.

Her father had come in and grinned at the sight, settling down beside them on the chaise and rolling up his sleeve. He brandished the Name _Louisa_ with pride, and Sarah’s mother had smiled softly at him as though for the first time.

Even at that young age, Sarah knew she wanted a Soulmate like her parents had each other, and she was quite certain she did. _Victor_ was scrawled across the back of her neck, and every night before bed, Sarah would angle her mirror just so, so that she could admire the Name and fantasize about when she and the house-master’s son were old enough to marry.

But to Sarah’s puzzlement, Victor did not have her Name. He instead had _Rufus_ painted on the inside of his wrist. In tears, Sarah fled to her father’s study and crawled into his arms.

“Whatever is the matter, my dear?” Robert asked in surprise, stroking his sobbing daughter’s hair.

“I have Victor as my Name,” she hiccuped into his shoulder, “but he doesn’t have me! He’s got Rufus as his Name, and it’s n-not f-fair!” Sarah wailed, burrowing deeper into her father’s embrace.

“Oh, is that all?” Robert soothed. “Sarah, my dear, that doesn’t mean anything. Many people do not have each other’s Names. Remember when I told you once that I was married before I met your mother?”

Sarah sniffled and nodded.

“She had my Name, right along her finger just here.” He lifted his ring finger and showed her. “As you know, though, I did not have hers, but we did love each other for a time. We thought perhaps we were Soulmates, and your mother’s Name might be my Enemy.” Her father’s eyes grew sad and a little misty; gently, Sarah reached up and wiped a stray tear from his eye. “I was her Heartbreak, and she was mine…but it’s alright, now, isn’t it, my dear? I found my Soulmate, and now I have you too.”

“Did she ever find her Soulmate?” Sarah asked, sobs now subsided into ragged breathing.

Robert smiled, but his expression was melancholy. “If I know Hattie, I do believe she made sure to.”

Satisfied with the conclusion to Robert’s tale, the little girl was ready to move on. “So Victor might still be my Soulmate?” she asked hopefully; Robert nodded. “That means Rufus must be his Enemy!” She frowned, readjusting herself in her father’s lap. “Oh, but that’s no good either. We’re all the best of friends, see, and I don’t want them to fight,” she explained, tiny brow furrowed at this new dilemma. “I must do something about this!”

Robert only chuckled and shook his head. “Let destiny run its course, my dear,” he said. “There are some things that can’t be changed.”

“Nonsense!” the five year old declared, hopping off his lap. “Like you told me, I’m the Chosen One! That means I can do anything I put my mind to.”

Her father’s smile faltered, and he cut a glance at his papers and journals. “Yes, my dear,” he sighed, “I suppose it does.”

But time passed and the three of them were happy in each other’s company, and Sarah rarely noticed any bad blood between the two boys. Still, it was only after her parents were gone for good did Sarah begin to wonder if Victor was her Soulmate. His father, ever cruel, seemed to have finally poisoned his son’s gentle heart, and he would snap at her, pressure her about her late parents’ secrets. Soulmates weren’t supposed to do that, were they?

For a while, before the Zenos took her in officially, her home became nothing more than a house, a prison with only the boy she thought was her Soulmate and the man she despised the most for company.  
  
  
Rufus assured her that Victor still cared for her, holding her as she spilled all her fears to him in the dead of night. He was always good like that and he was truly the best adopted brother Sarah could have been granted. At the end of the day, though, he was far closer to Victor than he was to her.

It only occurred to her years later when she was a grown woman and he was gone from her life, that Rufus never showed her the Name on his skin. She could guess, though, because while she may have been a dreamer, Sarah was far from stupid.

As they grew older, the three of them, she tried not to grow bitter over Rufus and Victor’s closeness, but it was difficult. Resentment gnashed at her heart with sharp teeth when they’d whisper to each other when they didn’t think she could hear and how they’d stop when she’d enter the room.

She still looked at the Name on the back of her neck every night before bed, but instead of admiring it, she’d scratch away at it, trying to erase it from her flesh. It never worked.

Her relationship with them, especially Victor, continued to strain, the threads in the tapestry she’d woven of their imagined future together unraveling each time he asked her about the Cup of Ankh or the Elixir.

She was aware of every wasted moment each time he took her hand in his or when he kissed her, and Sarah knew that Victor was aware too, especially when she’d catch him watching after Rufus when he’d leave a room.

There was no name that could be ascribed to the feelings in her chest—Sarah was tired of Names. For a time, Victor had seemed to grow warmer to her, closer, but like perpendicular lines their hearts met for one brief moment and then departed again, moving further and further from each other until they were practically strangers. He’d always looked like his father, but never had his eyes looked so hard and cold as they did then.

So no, they were not Soulmates.

For a very long time, Sarah would say they were Enemies to anyone who asked about the name on her neck. It certainly felt like it, even as she grew older and frailer, and the memories faded into distant bad dreams. She could still taste the bile in the back of her throat when she thought about those eyes, and she’d wake up with blood under her fingernails and a searing fire at the base of her neck.

One last time, she saw him, and he looked as he did when she’d last seen him many years before; the fog of age and time cleared enough for her to finally tell him what she hadn’t even known she needed to say. She could hear the house crying, and that was what she wanted to do as well.

But the time for crying was long over. With a frail, shaking hand, she touched the back of her neck and looked him in the eye—eyes that behind the coldness she could see a lifetime of regret—and said in a voice that hadn’t had such strength in over six decades:

  
  
_“I forgive you.”_

Her father had been right: destiny had run its course and all was as it should be. However, _as it should be_ did not always mean a happy ending.

That was the trouble with the Names: one could never tell what they signified until it was over. As she turned her back on him for the last time and let Mrs. Mulligan lead her away from Anubis House, Sarah accepted her lot in life and played the last card in her tragic hand; there was a reason Heartbreaks were the most dreaded of all the Names.


	2. Victor & Rufus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY NEW YEAR & HAPPY 10 YEARS OF HOA!
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

Victor often wondered about the Names, particularly his own. The _Rufus_ etched onto the inside of his wrist was a startling one, one that his father constantly mocked him for.

“For your stupid sake I hope that Zeno boy turns out to be your Nemesis,” he spat at Victor once. “Otherwise you’re not only a failure but a blasted _sodomite.”_

“Sarah has my name,” Victor had answered, trying to keep the tremors from his voice. “Don’t worry, daddy! She says she’s my Soulmate.”

His father’s eyes blazed in outrage. “You are to address me as Sir!” he bellowed. “A Soulmate? Your Soulmate is that little wretch?” His lips curled into an ugly sneer. “You useless piece of nothing, I’d rather you be a sodomite than bound to that secret keeper in any way.” Victor averted his eyes out of both fear and respect, and so missed his father rub his shoulder. “You will find out what she knows. She is not your Soulmate, and she is not your friend.”

“B-But I’ve tried—“

“Do it, or I shall send you to the orphanage,” his father hissed.

It was here that Victor and Sarah’s relationship took a turn for the worst. Sarah, the stubborn mule, never budged, even after his father had disappeared, telling him over and over that she didn’t know where her parents had hidden the treasure. Sometimes she’d even put on that stupid expression and say right to his face that she wasn’t even sure there _was_ a treasure. Even when Victor played the dutiful Soulmate—and sometimes managed to convince himself it was as it should be—the Name on his wrist burned and the bitterness towards his childhood friend grew most jagged in his chest.

However, even as the regrets piled up in his time spent cutting Sarah, his relationship with Rufus grew stronger, more tangible. They’d talk for hours about the treasure and what they’d do if they could live forever, and soon the talks would turn to what they’d do if they could live forever _together_.

“Rufus,” Victor murmured hesitantly one night when their conversation had faded to a comforting silence, “can I see your Name? You never show it to anyone.” Somewhere in his heart, though, he already knew.

Victor eyes were drawn to Rufus’ Adam’s apple bob up and down in a nervous swallow. “If I show you, it makes it real,” he whispered into the dim light of the study. “One way or another, it’s real.”

“You’ve seen my Name,” Victor replied. “It’s already real, one way or another.”

Rufus hesitated, then sighed deeply, reaching up to his collar and pulling it down to reveal the hasty yet elegant script that spelled out _Victor_ on his collarbone.

His breath hitched and almost in a trance, he reached out and traced the curls of the letters reverently.

“Sarah...” Rufus trailed off, but the question was evident.

“She’s not my Soulmate,” Victor said quietly, eyes still locked on the Name. “Even if we both pretend otherwise, she’s not my Soulmate.”

He never could be certain who moved first, but Victor always liked to lay the blame on Rufus. It was easier that way, blaming Rufus for kissing him first that night, because then Victor could blame him for everything that happened after.

It was painful, watching Rufus pull away, each sip of the Elixir undoing the knot that tethered him to Victor a little more every day. Even as they held each other in secret in the dead of night, whispering promises of forever, Victor knew that forever didn’t always mean together. If there was one thing Victor had long since learned was that love was finite, never quite enough of it to go around; it didn’t stop him from giving all of it to Rufus.

There was something a little mean, a little vindictive in Sarah’s eye even as she cried for her lost adopted brother the night after he denounced the Society and everyone in it, naming himself their enemy—Victor’s enemy. Victor couldn’t blame her, though, not really. But he could blame Rufus, and he would continue to do so with all of his heart.

Even years later, as he’d absently rub the inside of his wrist, he wondered what could have gone differently, a million different choices and scenarios. How had they gotten there, he wondered bitterly, looking up into Rufus’ cold manic eyes as he wrestled that godforsaken Mask from the Chosen One.

He forced his voice to be steady even as the Name on his wrist burned in wild panic. “Yes,” he said, not breaking gaze with his oldest Enemy and his bygone Soulmate, “you listen to this old man, Nina.”

It happened so fast, yet it seemed to take a lifetime for the screams to fade away into the silence of the library, even after the students had left.

Only one remained, her eyes betraying nothing even as they flickered to his exposed wrist.

“What was he to you?” Nina asked quietly, gently taking the Mask of Anubis out of his hands.

Victor took a deep breath and sighed out heavily. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah they gay keep scrolling 😤

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact, Victor Sr. in this AU has Sarah’s name. So now it’s up for the reader to decide if Sarah had a different Victor’s name as her Enemy after all.


End file.
